Hitler’s editor tells all

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Gerhard L Weinberg, who escaped Nazi Germany, explains why it’s important to read the sequel to Mein Kampf, called Hitler’s Second Book, which the historian helped to publish decades after the second world war

The Nazi Party’s publisher had kept the manuscript for Hitler’s Second Book in a safe before the Americans confiscated it.
Illustration: Chloe Cushman

In summer 1928, Adolf Hitler dictated to his longtime friend Max Amann, head of the Nazi Party’s publishing house, Eher Verlag, a book manuscript that the author never revised or published. A copy remained in a safe at Eher Verlag before it was confiscated by the US Army in May 1945.

Before I describe my relationship with this manuscript, I should explain a bit about my background. I was born into a Jewish family in Hanover, Germany, where my father ­– a decorated veteran of the first world war – was a provincial official. As the climate in Germany grew more dangerous, my family knew we had to leave. After fleeing to England, my parents, brother, sister and I all arrived in the States in 1940. Years later, after a stint in the US Army from 1946 to 1947, I earned my PhD and went to work researching captured German records.

I learned Hitler had dictated another book. Then in 1958, while processing files for microfilm, I found it. I worked with Munich’s Institute for Contemporary History to publish the text with annotations in 1961, under the title Hitler’s Zweites Buch, or Hitler’s Second Book. It took until 2003 for the first reliable English edition to appear.

Gerhard L Weinberg discovered Hitler’s Second Book in the late 1950s. Photograph: Janet I Weinberg

Why translate and publish the book?

I believe it’s critical for a work by a central historical figure, even Hitler, to be publicly accessible. The book gives an untouched window into Hitler’s views at the time. It also shows his character as a politician. He had just done badly in an election, yet his reaction was not to soft-pedal the party’s position on a critical issue. No, he insisted that he was correct all along and tried to cast himself as supremely wise, while all critics were knaves and fools.

I believe that it’s also important to have the book available in English in a way that accurately reflects the original German and is properly annotated, especially for terms, names and references that might be unclear to many readers. Countless global scholars have mentioned the text in their work. Hitler’s views were incredibly controversial, but if his policies are to be understood, then his views need to be, too.

Hitler’s Second Book is filled with hateful comments about the Jews; that will cause no surprise. The most intense rhetoric appeared in the first part of Mein Kampf, but the topic is dragged in all over the place in the later book, primarily in connection with denunciations of the German government.

The Second Book explicitly underscores the view that Germany’s global conquest would require a fight against the US, the preparation for which would be a major assignment for any Nazi government. Hitler viewed the US as weak, given its racial mixture and inherently feeble democratic institutions, but the country was far away from Germany and had a substantial navy. So as Germany’s chancellor starting in January 1933, Hitler worked to produce the weapons systems he believed he needed to crush France and England, and in 1937 he ordered an intercontinental bomber and super-battleships.

Was the manuscript really Hitler’s?

As for authenticity, one of Hitler’s secretaries referred to it when interviewed by the French intelligence officer Albert Zoller, and Hitler himself mentioned it in a conversation in 1942. The Institute in Munich also heard about it from the Eher Verlag official who had custody of the document until its confiscation. The text will convince any reader that it is indeed by Hitler. Bottom line: there has been no challenge to the document’s authenticity to date.

Some might wonder what moved Hitler to dictate another book so soon after finishing the second part of Mein Kampf in 1926, after the first half of his autobiography came out in 1925. I think it’s clear that the Nazi Party’s poor showing in the May 1928 German national election was a major – probably the deciding – factor.

During that election and in prior political debates, Hitler’s push for an alliance with Italy – and his renouncing of support for people of German background in the south Tyrol region that was annexed to Italy after the first world war – was used by opponents to discredit the Nazis. At the time, the German minority in Italy was probably the group of people in Europe most pressured by their new masters to change their language and customs. Opponents of the Nazi Party, which claimed to be strongly nationalistic, derided the move as abandoning a German minority.

Then why didn’t Hitler publish this new, then-untitled book before the next election, or later? Here we have to speculate. This was when Eher Verlag had the toughest time selling Mein Kampf. Surely another book by the same author would kill sales of the prior one, and I believe his friend Amann might have discouraged publication. Later, major revisions would have been required: in 1929, just a year after he dictated the manuscript, Hitler allied himself with extreme right-wing leaders and parties he had denounced endlessly in the text.

Hitler’s rhetoric came at a price

It’s worth noting that while Hitler did not publish the book, its text mirrors – indeed sometimes repeats almost verbatim – what he was saying publicly at the time. In Germany back then, people generally paid to hear Hitler speak. Admission fees shelled out by thousands of Germans were a major way to finance the Nazi Party before Hitler became chancellor. It is surely worthy of reflection that the steady call for new wars so soon after the slaughter of the first world war would enthuse vast numbers to “vote” financially for a renewed call to arms.

At a time when most people worldwide felt strongly that one colossal war was more than enough for the century, an increasing number of Germans could hardly wait for another one. At least in this regard, they would not be disappointed. Almost 2 million German soldiers lost their lives in the first world war. More than 5.3 million would die in the second. In this way, Hitler didn’t mislead the German people. He delivered on his promise.

Dr Gerhard L Weinberg is a German-born American historian who specializes in the origins and course of the second world war. He escaped from Germany in December 1938, and his parents followed in early 1939.